Sunday, 17 October 2010

Hadrat Abu Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him) states that the Prophet of God (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) observed:

''When the spoils of war will be regarded as personal property (instead of collective estate) and the things kept in trust shall be expropriated;
when the zakat shall be regarded as an indemnity;
and religious knowledge shall be gained merely to serve worldly interests;
when the husbands shall follow the counsels of their wives and shall subject their mothers to harassment;
when men shall be thicker with their friends and estranged from their fathers;
when mosques shall resound with the talk of the world;
when the leaders of the tribe shall become unbelievers;
when base people shall be appointed as leaders of nations;
when the mischievous shall be respected on account of fear;
when the number of singing and dancing women shall proliferate and musical instruments gain popularity;
when posterity shall begin to despise their pious forebearers;

then at that juncture wait for the red windstorms and earthquakes;
look forward then to being buried alive in the earth and expect your appearances to be distorted, amd await the falling of stones from the skies - along with calamities, await other signs too which shall follow in rapid succession, as beads fall one after the other when the string is broken (Tirmidhi)

The last indications of the approach of the Doomsday are these:
The first sign of the fall of doom will be that for three or four years people shall remain unaware and the worldly pleasures and lusts will be widespread.
Early in the morning on a Friday (which will also be a day of 'Ashura) people shall engage in their daily tasks, a voice will be heard by the people. This will be the trumpet sound.
People in all corners shall hear the voice equally clearly and they shall be wonder-struck as to what is this voice and whence it comes.
Gradually this voice will rise hard and sharp like the thunderbolt. There shall be a great commotion among the people due to this.
When the voice shall rise to the highest pitch, people shall start dying out of fear.
An earthquake will come; people shall run out of their homes in fright and come into the plains.
The wild beasts will run out of the forests in panic and rush into the crowds of people.
The earth will divide into fissures here and there.
The oceans will overflow their shores and inundate the habitations all around.
The fire will die out.
The heaviest and tallest mountains will be broken into pieces and theses pieces will fly about in fast winds like the grains of sand.
The universe will be plunged into darkness by the rising clouds of dust and windstorms.
The voice of doom will continue to grow harder and harder till by the impact of its terrible pitch, the skies will burst asunder and the stars will be broken into shatters.

Hudhaifa (may God be pleased with him) relates that the Prophet of God (peace be upon him) affirmed:

''The doom will not fall until the time when the most foolish person or a son of the most stupid fellow becomes the most fortunate and the richest man (i.e. until the time when the men of evil nature and foul character capture authority and rule in the world and become masters of its wealth) (Mishkat)

(Description of the end of time is from the book: The Spectacle of Death (including Glimpses of Life Beyond the Grave) by Khawaja Mohammad Islam)